


Gift

by ruric



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: comment_fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-05
Updated: 2009-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s been lucky enough to know love, to be surrounded and immersed in it, even if some of the time he didn’t recognise it for what it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gift

I love you.

He hears the words inside his head and he has heard them and dreamed about speaking them ever since he was old enough to understand what love really meant. 

He’s been lucky enough to know love, to be surrounded and immersed in it, even if some of the time he didn’t recognise it for what it was. 

He knows what it feels like, from the warmth and breadth of John’s hand between his shoulders and the rough hugs, to the pride in John’s voice and the approval in his eyes. Now he knows it was there through the fights and the angry words, because you don’t fight like that with someone you don’t love. But John is gone and he’ll never get the chance to tell him.

The loose network of hunters and their allies, spread across the country, showed them love too. It might have been less intense, more carefree, letting the kids run wild and look after themselves whilst the adults worked on plans and traps, but Sam had never doubted that Bobby, Pastor John and dozens of others cared for them too.

Love was there in Dean’s jokes and roughhousing when they were kids, the big brother who made sure he was never alone, who sat with him when he had nightmares, kept watch and kept the dark back. It was Dean who worked him hard and showed him how to defend himself. Dean who was always there for him and had pulled him back from death and now Dean’s gone and it’s too late to tell him.

It was there in Jess’s gentle touch and the way her eyes lit up when she looked at him. There in the plans they’d made together about what they were going to do _after_ Stanford.

He was...John’s child and Dean’s brother. 

He’s always understood the power of words – he knew as soon as he learned to talk. And if he hadn’t there was his father and brother and their friends to hammer it home. Name a thing and you show _them_ a weakness which can be easily exploited.

In all his years he’s used the words three times.

The first was in letter he tucked into John’s journal the day he left which ended with the words “I love you but I can’t stay”. The second was to whisper softly in Dean’s ear before he snuck out the door of their motel, hungry for the bright hope of Stanford and a chance to escape a life none of them had chosen. The last had been to Jess, the first time he took her into his bed.

He’s survived the loss of his mother, his lover and his father - but hope died the day the Hellhounds killed Dean in front of him.

He knows words and knows the power they hold. 

He knows the difference between “I want” and “I need”.

So when he holds out his hand, when his fingers lace with hers and he pulls her close, when he feels the heat of her body, and looks down to see the blackness rise to fill her eyes and when breathes “I love you” into her mouth he knows _exactly_ what he’s doing


End file.
